


M is Not a Letter

by PlaidCladHobbit



Category: Leverage
Genre: Eliot just really loves his family ok, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pre-OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidCladHobbit/pseuds/PlaidCladHobbit
Summary: Hardison dies in plan M, but this isn't plan M.orEliot's thoughts during The Grave Danger Job





	M is Not a Letter

Hardison is in a coffin. He’s alone, buried and claustrophobic, but not dead. Not yet. Eliot can hear him through the phone Parker is holding. He can hear him. He’s still alive, they can still save him. 

The job had gone bad so quickly, Nate was knocked out and Javier took Hardison as collateral. Eliot heard it all happen on the comms, but he wasn’t close enough to stop it. Wasn’t fast enough or good enough to protect them like he’s supposed to.

Hardison has a phone and limited air supply, they have to find him fast. They can’t afford to lose him. He’s the gooey mush that stops the rest of them from accidentally tearing each other apart with their sharp edges. 

Without Hardison, they wouldn’t recover. Eliot wouldn’t recover. He’s meant to be the one who takes the fall. It’s literally his job to protect him. To take the hits so they don’t have to. Today can’t be the day he fails. 

Plan M is never an option.

Eliot has worked many jobs. Protected a lot of people, and punched even more. But these four hyper-competent idiots, they’re his. The ones he chose, and that chose him. 

Nate, with his god complex three miles wide and twice as deep. Always five paces ahead of everyone else, chock full of alcohol and crazy decisions that work out in the end. 

Sophie, who slips inside so many different personas, pulling them on and walking around like she’s trying on a new coat. She’s put coats on top of coats and now can’t remember what it’s like to not wear one. 

Parker, who memorises bank security and schematics in her off time, and stabs as a warning. With her bed in the centre of a massive empty warehouse because that’s where she feels safe.

Hardison, with his massive issues with authority and far too much love to give. Who hacked the Bank of Iceland solely to pay off his Nana’s medical bills.

They’re Eliot’s people and they aren’t sold separately. 

So they steal an ambulance and police car and they search. Sirens blaring, they drive past the cemeteries, waiting for Hardison to say he hears them.

They’re not going to make it. 

He can see how it will play out, exactly how each of his crew will react in the weeks following.

Nate will crumble. He’ll crawl so deep inside a bottle not even Sophie would be able to see him. He’s barely come to terms with Sam. Losing another son will break him. He’ll bury his feelings so deep they’ll hit magma and burn him up from the inside. And then he’ll be gone too.

Sophie will kill herself. Burn herself to the ground and rise as someone new, with a new name and a different life. One that never intersected with Hardison’s. One that hasn’t lost so much. She’ll bury herself right alongside Hardison and walk away. Become Jessica or Yael or Marcy, anyone but Sophie Devereaux.

Parker… Parker will survive. It’s what she does, she’s lived through a lot of shit in her short life and this won’t be what breaks her. But she’ll never allow herself to get close to anyone again. The joy that lives just below her skin, always bursting out in ways only she can pull off, it’ll be smothered. She’ll become cold and detached. Just like Eliot was before he was thrust into their proximity. Before they slipped between his keratin plates while he wasn’t watching and settled inside his heart. 

And Eliot, he’ll hunt down Javier and break every single one of his 206 bones. Slowly. And when he runs out of bones… 

Eliot’s not a cruel man, he doesn’t revel in other people’s pain. He’s more likely to stew inside his own, let it dissolve away the damaged parts; until it’s gone or he is. 

But if he has to listen to Hardison die. Hear the fear in his voice, and then the nothing. Knowing that he was just around the corner or down the road. Just out of reach. Well, that will shatter something deep inside of him so completely that he won’t even know what it was, to begin with. 

And there will be nothing left to stop him. No one left. He will lose his entire family. The one they made for themselves when their first ones didn’t work out. Hardison dies and he loses them all.

So, he’ll make Javier hurt. Make him experience a fraction of the pain Eliot will feel. He’ll hope it’ll help, know it won’t, and do it anyway. 

They’ve found him, but he’s running out of air. Five. He’s half-buried, right in front of Sophie, not even 5 metres away, and she can’t get to him. Javier is shooting at her. Eliot can hear it through the comms, and he can’t do anything. He’s dealing with Javier’s lackey. Four. And he. Won’t. Stay. Down. That final punch drops him and Eliot sprints across the cemetery as Nate tackles Javier from behind. 

The gun flies across the grass. Three. Parker picks it up and aims it at the coffin. Two. Eliot runs faster, Parker fires. Three holes emerge in the side of it and Hardison inhales loudly. 

He’s alive. Eliot wants to collapse to the ground and sob but Hardison is still in the box. He rips open the lid and hauls Hardison out. Quick once over to make sure he’s not been shot, then pulls him into a fierce hug. Hardison returns it. Eliot cups the back of his head and growls into his neck. Never again. 

As Hardison hugs the rest of their crew, Eliot releases his breath for the first time in 30 minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?


End file.
